The deployment of active sonar by the U.S. Navy and its potential impacts on marine mammals has been an ongoing issue of intense debate; regulatory, legislative, and judicial activity; and international concern. This report summarizes legal and political events related to active sonar and marine mammals since 1994. This report summarizes some of the more significant recent events pertaining to active military sonar, in particular.

This report discusses the increasing attention being paid to alternative fuels and advanced technology vehicles, the proponents of which point to their potential to improve urban air quality, decrease dependence on foreign oil, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report also discusses the major barriers currently preventing widespread use of such technologies, and discusses these technologies in the particular contexts of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes and the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The purpose of this project was to conduct detailed surface mapping of one of the areas drilled by the Joint Industry Project with ChevronTexaco to understand gas hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico. The gently sloping, mostly flat floor of the Mississippi Canyon is interrupted by mounds and depressions that presumably reflect the complex geology and geohydrology related to turbidite deposition and pervasive salt tectonism. The seafloor mounds we mapped in this study occur in approximately 1300 water depth along the floor of the Mississippi Canyon in lease block areas Atwater Valley 13 and 14. High resolution sidescan sonar (100 kHz and 500 kHz) backscatter imagery, and chirp sub-bottom profiler data were collected using the DT1 deep-towed oceanographic mapping instrument, concentrating on the region directly adjacent to and surrounding two mounds identified as, mounds D and F, and in the region directly adjacent to and surrounding the mounds. The backscatter data have been mosaiced and normalized to provide information on the shape and extent of the mounds, the possible lateral extent of fauna, such as mussel and clam fields on the mounds, possible seep related flows and the occurrence of carbonate material. The extent of a mudflow can be mapped …

This report discusses the budget reconciliation process that is used by congress during the past quarter-century to implement major changes in budget policy.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, Congress has expressed concern that urgent joint warfighting requirements are not always met in the most expeditious manner, particularly command and control and blue-force-tracking capabilities that reduce the chances of friendly-fire casualties. In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (P.L. 108-136), Congress gave the U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) Limited Acquisition Authority (LAA) to address these and other joint-warfighting challenges. LAA is an authority aimed at ensuring that measures to meet urgent, unanticipated joint warfighting needs are conceived, developed, and fielded in an expeditious manner. Enacted for a 3-year period, LAA will expire after September 30, 2006. The Act required GAO to determine the extent to which LAA has been used. Specifically, we focused on (1) how JFCOM used the authority during fiscal years 2004 and 2005, (2) the processes and procedures JFCOM developed to implement the authority, and (3) the challenges of implementing it. In covering these areas, we did not evaluate the quality of the projects undertaken or the value added of the equipment provided to the warfighter under LAA."

High-level nuclear waste produced from fuel reprocessing operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) requires pretreatment to remove {sup 137}Cs, {sup 90}Sr and alpha-emitting radionuclides (i.e., actinides) prior to disposal onsite as low level waste. Separation processes planned at SRS include caustic side solvent extraction, for {sup 137}Cs removal, and sorption of {sup 90}Sr and alpha-emitting radionuclides onto monosodium titanate (MST). The predominant alpha-emitting radionuclides in the highly alkaline waste solutions include plutonium isotopes {sup 238}Pu, {sup 239}Pu and {sup 240}Pu. This paper describes recent results to produce an improved sodium titanate material that exhibits increased removal kinetics and capacity for {sup 90}Sr and alpha-emitting radionuclides compared to the baseline MST material.

Several resource issues that are designed to generate revenue for the federal Treasury have been proposed for the FY2006 budget reconciliation bill. The most controversial of these provisions recommended by the House Resources Committee and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee would open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas development. The House panel also approved a provision that would allow coastal states to “opt out” of the current offshore oil and gas development moratoria, increase fees for hardrock mining and patents, dispose of certain federal lands, and begin an oil shale and tar sands leasing program.

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This report briefly describes the Agriculture committees' jurisdiction over forestry, with examples of legislation addressed by the committees. It concludes with a discussion of forestry issues likely to be addressed in the upcoming farm bill.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Council for Automotive Research (composed of automakers Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler) announced in January 2002 a new cooperative research effort. Known as FreedomCAR (derived from ''Freedom'' and ''Cooperative Automotive Research''), it represents DOE's commitment to developing public/private partnerships to fund high-risk, high-payoff research into advanced automotive technologies. Efficient fuel cell technology, which uses hydrogen to power automobiles without air pollution, is a very promising pathway to achieve the ultimate vision. The new partnership replaces and builds upon the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles initiative that ran from 1993 through 2001. The Vehicle Systems subprogram within the FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program provides support and guidance for many cutting-edge automotive and heavy truck technologies now under development. Research is focused on understanding and improving the way the various new components of tomorrow's automobiles and heavy trucks will function as a unified system to improve fuel efficiency. This work also supports the development of advanced automotive accessories and the reduction of parasitic losses (e.g., aerodynamic drag, thermal management, friction and wear, and rolling resistance). In supporting the development of hybrid propulsion systems, the Vehicle Systems subprogram has enabled the development …

This report compares current United States and European Union (EU) efforts in the area of green payments. Green payments refer to "payments made to agricultural producers as compensation for environmental benefits that accrue at levels beyond what producers might otherwise achieve under existing market and regulatory conditions" (summary). The report gives an overview of policies, programs, financing, and various other aspects of comparison related to the topic.

This report discusses the Navy's homeland security (HLS) and homeland defense (HLD) operations, which raise several potential oversight issues for Congress, including Navy coordination with the Coast Guard in HLS and HLD operations.

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New materials and corresponding manufacturing processes are likely candidates for diesel engine components as society and customers demand lower emission engines without sacrificing power and fuel efficiency. Strategies for improving thermal efficiency directly compete with methodologies for reducing emissions, and so the technical challenge becomes an optimization of controlling parameters to achieve both goals. Approaches being considered to increase overall thermal efficiency are to insulate certain diesel engine components in the combustion chamber, thereby increasing the brake mean effective pressure ratings (BMEP). Achieving higher BMEP rating by insulating the combustion chamber, in turn, requires advances in material technologies for engine components such as pistons, port liners, valves, and cylinder heads. A series of characterization tests were performed to establish the material properties of ceramic powder. Mechanical chacterizations were also obtained from the selected materials as a function of temperature utilizing ASTM standards: fast fracture strength, fatique resistance, corrosion resistance, thermal shock, and fracture toughness. All ceramic materials examined showed excellent wear properties and resistance to the corrosive diesel engine environments. The study concluded that the ceramics examined did not meet all of the cylinder head insert structural design requirements. Therefore we do not recommend at this time their use for …

Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has exerted great effort in manipulating the flow of information and prohibiting the dissemination of viewpoints that criticize the government or stray from the official Communist party view. The introduction of Internet technology in the mid-1990’s presented a challenge to government control over news sources, and by extension, over public opinion. While the Internet has developed rapidly, broadened access to news, and facilitated mass communications in China, many forms of expression online, as in other mass media, are still significantly stifled. This report discusses the history of this issue and examines the U.S.'s response.

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The Animal Shelter campus plan includes a new adoption center coupled with a dog adoption park, a wellness/veterinary technician education center, a show arena, and an addition to the existing shelter that will accommodate all animal control and sheltering for the Las Vegas Valley. The new facility will provide a sophisticated and innovative presentation of the animals to be adopted in an attempt to improve the public's perception of shelter animals. Additionally, the Regional Animal Campus will be a ''green building'', embodying a design intent on balancing environmental responsiveness, resource efficiency and cultural and community sensitivity. Designing an energy-efficient building helps reduce pollution from burning fossil fuels, reduce disturbance of natural habitats for the harvesting of resources and minimizes global warming. The project will be a leader in the use of renewable energy by relying on photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, and solar collectors to produce a portion of the project's energy needs The building will operate more efficiently in comparison to a typical shelter through the use of monitoring and specialized cooling/heating equipment. Windows bringing in natural daylight will reduce the center's demand for electricity.

Malignant melanoma is the 6th most commonly diagnosed cancer with increasing incidence in the United States. It is estimated that 54,200 cases of malignant melanoma will be newly diagnosed and 7,600 cases of death will occur in the United States in the year 2003 (1). At the present time, more than 1.3% of Americans will develop malignant melanoma during their lifetime (2). The average survival for patients with metastatic melanoma is about 6-9 months (3). Moreover, metastatic melanoma deposits are resistant to conventional chemotherapy and external beam radiation therapy (3). Systematic chemotherapy is the primary therapeutic approach to treat patients with metastatic melanoma. Dacarbazine is the only single chemotherapy agent approved by FDA for metastatic melanoma treatment (5). However, the response rate to Dacarbazine is only approximately 20% (6). Therefore, there is a great need to develop novel treatment approaches for metastatic melanoma. The global goal of this research program is the rational design, characterization and validation of melanoma imaging and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals. Significant progress has been made in the design and characterization of metal-cyclized radiolabeled alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone peptides. Therapy studies with {sup 188}Re-CCMSH demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy of the receptor-targeted treatment in murine and human melanoma bearing mice …

The invention relates to a method of synthesizing high-temperature melting materials. More specifically the invention relates to a containerless method of synthesizing very high temperature melting materials such as borides, carbides and transition-metal, lanthanide and actinide oxides, using an Aerodynamic Levitator and a laser. The object of the invention is to provide a method for synthesizing extremely high-temperature melting materials that are otherwise difficult to produce, without the use of containers, allowing the manipulation of the phase (amorphous/crystalline/metastable) and permitting changes of the environment such as different gaseous compositions.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy has been transforming itself to better meet 21st century needs. Since 2000, the Congress has appropriated about $50 billion annually for the Navy to operate and maintain its forces and support around 376,000 military personnel. In recognizing that the Navy faces affordability issues in sustaining readiness within its historical share of the defense budget, the Chief of Naval Operations announced a concept called the Fleet Response Plan to enhance its deployment readiness status. The Fleet Response Plan is designed to more rapidly prepare and sustain readiness in ships and squadrons. GAO evaluated the extent to which the Navy has (1) employed a sound management approach in implementing the Fleet Response Plan and (2) tested and evaluated the effectiveness of the plan and shared results to improve implementation."

This report discusses the permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) between United States and Ukraine.

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